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Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Christmas without snow I am fine with but I don't like warm Christmas unless you are referring to the warming love we share with each other! The weather is soon to turn cold in Hong Kong and hopefully the Hong Kong Observatory is accurate this time. In order to prepare myself for a cold Christmas, my friend and I ventured into the old neighborhood of Wan Chai for a more exotic and heart warming lunch: snake!

The store front was small with only a dozen or so chairs inside. I am not a person who likes to wait in line so I was already looking around for another restaurant near by that specializes in snake. Fortunately the man behind the counter informed us that we can go ahead with the orders and would be escorted to their secondary dining area across the street. Great! Among the various set lunches, I picked one which I can have as much snake as possible!! Wait! Where were the real snakes??? I came all the way to take some pictures of those snakes?? No snakes were in sight, very disappointed!!

(1) Snake Soup with & without meatsThe set came with two soups, one with just the soup and one with snake meats plus other shredded ingredients. I started with the one with the meats and they tasted like chicken too me. The flavors were strong with traces of Chinese herbs. Even the texture of the snake meats was similar to that of chicken in my opinion. It was good, plenty of ingredients in the bowl and it really started to warm up my heart halfway through, perhaps it was the heat from the liquid or the snake meats were doing the trick!

As for the soup without the meat, wow, it was strong and rich! It was the same kind of soup but 3 times stronger!! I still don't understand why there were two soups in one set, there has to be a reason!

(2) Hot Clay Pot Rice with Snake Belly Meats and Fish MawIt was sizzling when it arrived and the steam coming out of it made the picture taking process very difficult! The combination of snake meats and fish maw was rather interesting but surprisingly pleasant in terms of flavors and textures. Instead of the meaty part of the snake, snake belly was used. It was slightly chewy like fish skins (actually it looked like fish skins to me if I didn't know it was snake) and the same applies to the Fish Maw. A bit more soy sauce would be nice but the slightly marinated snake belly and Chinese mushroom provided sufficient flavors as well. At this point, my body was really warmed up!!

Likes:

Rich and strong Snake Soup with Snake Meat, really warmed my body!!

Very interesting combination of snake meats and fish maw.

Dislikes:

Very few brunt rice sticking to the pot, those were the essence of hot clay pot rice!

I think Shea Wong Lam at Sheung Wan and Shea Wong Hip at Shumshuipo have real snake in the store, but they were hidden in the layers of wooden drawers. Shea Wong Lam is at Hillier Street at Sheung Wan, close to the MTR station and perhaps you can at least have a look at the drawers. Probably by request they can show you the snake!

@Greentea00: yeah, I rarely eat snake, perhaps only once during the past 5 years (excluding this recent visit). It is time to go around town to try different shops and see how different or unique they can be :)

The weather is getting cool now so should be a good time to try snake :)

Shea Wong Lam at Hillier Street in Sheung Wan does have snake, alive and kicking (well, just moving slowly to be honest), in the shop! I walked by this morning, and I saw some snake in a metal cage on top of those wooden drawers. They were better looking and smaller than I thought. So I highly recommend you to pay a visit to this shop, try their soup and take some pictures. I had the soup before and it was fair. The best snake soup I had was at Tim's Kitchen though.